


Beggars Can't Be Choosers

by QuickSilverFox3



Series: Mag7 Summer Swagbag Challenge [8]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, D&D Shenanigans, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24981100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickSilverFox3/pseuds/QuickSilverFox3
Summary: Sam has a cunning plan, and he knows exactly who to unleash it on.-Joshua only shrugged, shit-eating grin plastered reflexively onto his face, slipping only slightly in the face of Billy’s glare.“If you die, mon cher,” Goodnight pressed a kiss to Billy’s free hand, “I have poetry ready and prepared.”
Relationships: Billy Rocks & Everyone, Emma Cullen & Everyone, Goodnight Robicheaux & Everyone, Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks, Jack Horne & Everyone, Joshua Faraday & Everyone, Matthew Cullen & Everyone, Sam Chisolm & Everyone, Sam Chisolm/Emma Cullen/Matthew Cullen, Vasquez (The Magnificent Seven 2016) & Everyone
Series: Mag7 Summer Swagbag Challenge [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789006
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12
Collections: Mag7 Summer Swagbag Challenge





	Beggars Can't Be Choosers

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone's characters are listed in the end notes!  
> Set in the same universe [ as this fic here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24394849)  
> Written for Mag7 Summer Swagbag June Challenge: Theme prompt: ‘Role reversal’.

“Your group — bloody and exhausted following your recent fight, and your decision  _ not _ to take a long rest,” Sam leant back in his chair to stare at Joshua who continued to stare at the empty plate in front of him, deliberately not meeting Sam’s gaze, “continues on through the cavern, following the bobbing light held by your kobold guide.”

“If I die,” Billy sat forward in his seat, stabbing his pencil in Joshua’s direction as if he was wishing it was something sharper — hair askew from his fingers running through it, twisting it tighter and tighter over the course of the last fight — before rapping it against the mess of scribbles in his health box on his character sheet, “I will be very angry with you.”

Joshua only shrugged, shit-eating grin plastered reflexively onto his face, slipping only slightly in the face of Billy’s glare.

“If you die, mon cher,” Goodnight pressed a kiss to Billy’s free hand, “I have poetry ready and prepared.”

Billy sighed, shifting Goodnight’s grip on his hand so their fingers were intertwined, shoulders relaxing as he sat back, chair creaking with every movement.

“Babe!” Emma called, using Vasquez’s shoulder to brace herself as she climbed onto her knees, shoes long since discarded beneath the table, “If I die, will you write me poetry?”

“You don’t want to— to hear my poetry,” Matthew replied, knocking the door open fully with his hip, carefully carrying a full tray of cookies — warm and faintly steaming in a checkerboard of golden and dark brown with chips and smarties scattered throughout. He failed to knock away Alejandro’s swipe at the plate — two cookies vanishing into his mouth before it even hit the table — but he was prepared for Joshua.

“Ow!”

“But I will weep and wail and rend my clothes,” Matthew continued, waving the wooden spoon at Joshua, moving round the table to scramble onto Sam’s lap, kissing the spot on his jawline where rough stubble gave way to smooth skin.

Emma grinned, sticking her tongue out as Alejandro rolled his eyes dramatically.

“Theatre kids,” he groused, covering his mouth with his hand as he chewed, flashing Matthew a quick thumbs up in thanks.

“Anyway,” Red said, nibbling on a piece of pretzel — carefully prepared in isolation so the youngest of the group could enjoy snacks with the rest of them — and waving one hand at Faraday to shut the other man up, “Can we get back to this probable ambush?”

“Definitely an ambush,” Jack added, small circular glasses balanced low on his nose as he glanced up from his notes.

Sam didn’t think he could love Matthew anymore than in the moment that the man leant forward to study Sam’s notes — partly written in code with several false trails laced throughout, impossible for him to be able to read after Sam caught Red searching for them one lazy Sunday afternoon — and let out a low dark chuckle, rumbling through Sam’s very bones.

The table immediately erupted into yelling.

⁂

“Has everyone calmed down now?” Sam asked, the sharp tone in his voice normally reserved for unruly teenagers in his classroom but it worked on argumentative adults as well. 

“Yes,” Jack answered calmly, carefully stacking his dice into a tower, deliberately not watching Red as the younger man did the same, lips pursed as he focused. There was, however, not a force on earth that could stop Billy from glaring at Joshua; not even Goodnight sitting mostly on his seat, keeping up a stream of filthy French into his ear. 

“Okay, so can I get a marching order please?” 

“I’ll go first,” Emma said, placing her miniature minotaur — axe raised over her head and head lowered, about to charge — on the table, “I’ve got the most health for the moment.”

Joshua placed his Satyr Fighter, and caught Goodnight’s Aasimar Paladin and Billy’s Changeling Cleric — currently a dark elf man — to carefully place them down.

“Mind if I go in front of you two?” Alenjandro asked, wriggling his fingers in the direction of the plate — a silent request for more, which Billy obliged, shoving it the precious inches closer with his pencil, “I believe I have more spell slots left than you.”

“If you die—” Billy began, pencil brandished like a weapon.

“If I die, then I get to play a warlock,” Alenjandro said with a shrug, a gleam in his eye, “I have been working on them for a month.”

“Always with the fancy spells,” Joshua muttered, soft enough to not be overheard, but Alejandro’s ears were almost attuned to his voice, immediately scrambling up on his chair to glare at Joshua over Jack’s head.

“¡Te patearé el trasero, guero, incluso antes de que te pongas al alcance!” Alejandro hissed.

“Was that in character?” Red asked, shit-eating grin firmly in place as he pulled Vasquez’s Yuan-Ti Sorcerer from his hand, tossing it blindly in Joshua’s direction.

“Fuck you,” Alejandro said, with no heat behind his words.

“Fuck you,” Red chirped back in his clipped character voice, pushing his Kenku Ranger forward.

“Guess that means I’m providing rear guard. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Jack placed his Firbolg Druid at the back of the line, all eyes turning expectantly to Sam.

Sam felt, rather than saw, Matthew grin against his shoulder; a low susurrus of groans erupting from seven throats.

⁂

“The tunnels open up into a small cavern. You can hear the slow drip of water from somewhere high overhead, and see clusters of stalagmites dotted everywhere.”

Alejandro surreptitiously tapped Jack’s arm, pointing up and then down with a furrowed brow.

Jack pointed upwards, Alejandro nodding seriously as they turned their attention back to Sam.

“What would you like to do?” Sam finished, cracking his knuckles as he shifted his notes around, all hidden behind the screen. Matthew wrapped his arms around Sam’s chest from behind, resting his chin on his shoulder; and Sam turned just enough to kiss him, keeping half an eye on his increasingly nervous players.

“Can I sense any undead?” Billy asked immediately, as Red called, “Can I see anything?”

“Perception check for Red, and Billy you know, as before, that you can’t sense anything.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not there,” Billy muttered to Goodnight who nodded, rolling a dice — one of his aasimar d20s with gold and brown swirled through it like a tiger's eye — around his palm.

“I got a—” Red paused to tap on his fingers, mouthing numbers silently to himself, “—seventeen.”

“So Red, with a seventeen you see amongst the naturally occurring stalagmite pillars, one group, off to the left hand side, that appears more uniform than the others. Nothing else catches your eye.”

“I would like to point at it,” Red said slowly, glancing at Jack, still double checking from the more experienced player in the group, “And say ‘Strange.’”

Red’s character voice had been honed over the years of mimicking people’s voices back at them, making a kenku the most obvious choice. He let the word catch in his throat, sounding as if he was undead, causing Joshua to shift his shoulders in discomfort.

“Should have never let your character talk to that lich,” Joshua grumbled, Alejandro cackling at the memory.

“That was a lot of fun,” Alejandro said, his nostalgic enthusiasm pulling an aborted laugh from Billy.

“You had to shout when you talked for the entirety of fight—”

“Whoever decided that a round was six seconds long, and that was enough, obviously didn’t have a man yelling each and every action in their ear for ten of them,” Goodnight interjected.

“—then you turned into a sheep, and upon turning back, what exactly did you manage to do?”

“Cast Fireball as a third level spell centred on myself,” Alejandro recited, unable to fully keep the pride from his voice.

“Returning to the problem at hand,” Jack said, “Does our guide seem any kind of way about this strange group of rocks?”

Sam flicked a page over, scanning down to the relevant part of his notes — Matthew had, helpfully and after consulting with Teddy about what a kobold looked like, drawn a small lizard with sunglasses next to it — and quickly read them.

“Your guide is seemingly perfectly normal. No different than before.”

“Insight check please, Sam.”

Sam nodded, fighting to keep his grin from his face. His plan — first thought of in a bought of insomnia that drove him from their bed to pace the kitchen, fighting back the memories of long dead faces and the tang of blood in his mouth — was about to come to fruition. 

“I got a non-natural twenty,” Jack said, Emma marking it on her tally chart and sipping on her drink, wrinkling her nose when she realised the layers had separated.

“Your guide seems to be very happy and calm here. He doesn’t seem worried at all, if anything he seems like he is having a good time.”

“I wish Teddy was here,” Goodnight sighed, resting his head on his hands as he studied the party formation.

“Goody, you cannot use my best friend as  _ cannon fodder _ ,” Emma snapped, reflexively pulling out her phone to see if Teddy had texted her yet. “Anyway, you know he had to try to attend some of his awful family’s awful reunion for his Nana.”

“He does being cannon fodder so well. My daddy always said that is a very good skill to have,” Goodnight explained patiently — an argument that occurred almost every session, and one he had yet to win.

“And that’s why we left him at the School, rather than bring his character along with you awful lot.”

“I’m going to head over to the rock formation,” Joshua announced.

“I’m going too,” Alejandro added. “Can’t let you have all the fun, guero,” he said with a shrug when Joshua turned to frown at him.

“I don’t like this,” Billy muttered, leg bouncing fast enough to rattle the glasses on the table, tapping on his chosen spells as if to remind himself of their existence.

“Do you not trust me, Billy?” Sam asked, not meeting the other’s gaze as Billy turned his head a fraction of an inch to glare at him.

“You know I don’t.”

“Sam. Rock formation,” Joshua prompted, kneeling up on his chair and almost vibrating from excitement. Alejandro nodded next to him, a grin firmly plastered on his face.

“In the rock formation, you see a small pedestal that seems man-made as it’s formed from a small stack of carefully smoothed rocks. Resting on the divot on the top is a fist sized jewel—”

“I grab it,” Joshua and Alejandro said in unison. Both were sitting up on their knees, leaning forward as if on the starting block for a race.

Sam grinned, delighting in the flicker of unease that slowly passed over their faces, slowly sinking back into their seats.

“Joshua, Alejandro. You feel warmth flood through you both, comforting at first and then painful as it continues, feeling as if you were burning from the inside out. You can try to scream, but it makes no sound. And then it’s over. You collapse to the ground, weak and boneless, and look up to see your own face staring back at you. Swap character sheets please.”

⁂

“Give me strength I need today Lord, may I thrive in the power of your spirit. In Your name, Amen.”

Jack tucked his rosary back beneath his shirt, and folded his hands in his lap. Emma raised her head — having reflexively lowered it when Jack started to pray — and had to clap her hands over her mouth to stifle the peals of laughter. Matthew waggled his fingers at her, reaching around the carved wooden screen, and she passed him a cookie — Matthew settling sideways against Sam’s chest, idly swinging his legs. 

“Was that in character, Jack?” Sam asked, tucking Matthew’s head beneath his chin.

“No. That was for me.”

Billy let out a bark of laughter, the sound finally snapping Alejandro and Joshua out of their stupor.

“Ní féidir liom. Ní féidir liom é a thabhairt dó,” Joshua said, waving his hands fast enough to cause Goodnight to shift onto Billy’s lap to avoid being hit. 

“¿Un luchador, Sam? ¿Crees que puedo jugar cuerpo a cuerpo?” Alejandro spat out in rapid-fire Spanish, barely pausing to take a breath before launching back into his rant.

“Sit down,” Emma snapped, face hard and eyes as cold as flint. Both men sat, jaws snapping shut. Wordlessly, they pushed their sheets towards each other, faces growing paler as they read them over.

“Feeling calmer?” Sam asked.

“Sorry, Sam. Just a shock.”

“Sorry,” Joshua echoed, “Bad reflex. I’ll work on it.”

Sam nodded, waving his hand as if to say everything was forgiven, which it was. It would do them both some good to try new character classes, and he had been hoping it would be Joshua and Alenjandro who fell into his neatly constructed plot. 

“How many actions do you need, guero? Are you compensating for something, ay?”

“What is this?” Joshua asked, brandishing Alenjandro’s spell sheet at him, “Why is your handwriting so tiny? Do you have a magnifying glass with you?”

Jack sighed, bowing his head once more, passing the rosary through his fingers. 

“Do we see all this?” Goodnight asked, silencing the scabbling pair with a look — one of the only traits of his mother that he actively maintained.

“If you two truly don’t want to swap—” Sam began.

“No we will,” they both chimed in unison, settling down as their blood cooled. 

“I think I’m trying to get away, but I can’t work out how to move,” Joshua said, picking up Alejandro’s figure — only human from the waist up and heavy snake coils wrapping around the base.

“I had legs before I transformed more, so I think I’m likely walking, but wobbly,” Alejandro agreed, swaying from side to side in demonstration.

“Is the jewel still around, and can I do an Arcana check on it?” Billy asked.

“I’m going to grab our guide,” Emma announced, a gleam in her eye. 

Sam breathed out a slow sigh of relief — Matthew pausing to press a rough kiss to the hollow of his throat — and began to speak once more.

⁂

“Roll initiative.”

“Hang on, I’m changing my dice,” Alejandro announced, voice slightly muffled as he rummaged in his bag resting by his feet.

“Just use Joshua’s dice,” Red said.

“He’s  _ not _ touching my dice.” 

Goodnight sighed, the noise morphing into a yelp as Billy flicked his ear. “As if you can sigh, when you’re just as bad,” he said, tapping Goodnight’s dice bag — splitting at the seams and re-patched so many times that only the faintest sliver of the original fabric remained. 

Alejandro emerged triumphant — holding out the jet black dice shot through with silver for Joshua’s approval — and rolled.

“So… a fourteen?” 

Jack leant over and nodded.

“Why is your health so low?” Joshua groaned, covering his face with his hands, peeking through his fingers and wincing at the number, “Why is  _ that _ your armour class?”

“Stop whinging and help us fight this Umber Hulk,” Emma said, rattling her dice in anticipation.

“What even are spells?”

“Faraday!”

⁂

“So how would you like to do this?”

Joshua slumped forward onto the table in silent benediction as Jack grinned broadly, carefully unfolding his fingers from the rosary.

“Isn’t asking for God’s help cheating, Jack?” Joshua asked, directing his words into the pitted wood of the table, giggling when Jack gently cuffed the back of his head.

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways, and if He wants me to succeed in this game of D and D, I am not going to say no.”

“When this thing—”

“Umber Hulk,” Emma said, glancing up from her scribbled notes.

“—Yeah that. When it dies, we,” Alenjandro gestured between himself and Joshua, “change back, si?”

“That’s what my Arcana check said,” Billy answered, flicking back and forth between two different spells, craning his neck to inspect the other’s HP.

“Me and the guero are flanking it, so I’d like to stab the sword into its stomach, and drag it up as the—” Alenjandro waved his hand, the word escaping him.

“Satyr,” Red supplied.

“—and then shift back into my Sorcerer and finish him by clawing his throat out?”

“Violent,” Emma observed, “I love it.”

“You can definitely do that,” Sam agreed.

Emma’s phone began to buzz, her face blanching as she scrambled for it.

“Hi Teddy,” she said, chewing on her lip as she listened, nodding even though he couldn’t see her. 

“Can we stop there, Sam?” she whispered, blindly scrambling for her shoes beneath the table, “Teddy needs a ride.”

“I’ll go too,” Matthew said, kissing Sam’s cheek as he stood up, kicking one of Emma’s shoes back to her.

“It’s a good place to stop,” Sam agreed, catching sight of Alejandro and Joshua passing their character sheets back out of the corner of his eye.

“That was actually not too bad,” Alenjandro said slowly, cracking his knuckles, “But you have too many actions.”

“And you have too many spell consequences. Sorry that your character’s now five foot.”

Alejandro laughed, scooping his dice back up and starting to flick them at Red’s dice tower. 

“That’s a thought,” Sam said, half to himself.

“What’s a thought?” Goodnight asked, head snapping up like a startled rabbit, “Sam, what are you planning now?”

Sam only shrugged, delighting in the groan that was issued from the group. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sam: DM  
> Joshua: Satyr Fighter  
> Vasquez: Yuan-Ti Sorcerer  
> Emma: Minotaur Barbarian  
> Goodnight: Aasimar Paladin  
> Billy: Changeling Cleric  
> Red: Kenku Ranger  
> Horne: Firbolg Druid  
> Teddy: Halfling Wizard  
> [ My Tumblr!](https://inkformyblood.tumblr.com) Requests are always welcome!  
> 


End file.
